It Was Like My Vagina
It
was like my vagina had a pulse or something one of those Tales from the Crypt
in which you realize your body is an incubator and that thrumming an aberrant
pulse an engine that won’t quite turn over. I am certain the waterbug is dead.
Select career pants and jackets. Either way you lose.
The
storm approaches quickly. She will not go quietly. The picture is Braden
tramping to the final rock of the island, set against water and sky. She writes
too.
I
don’t know what high road I thought I was taking in sitting next to him but he
smelled BAD. In a compound sort of way. But in the end it was the scratching
that got to me. The women in the back spoke of pleasant things to be
encountered in Mankato, MN. But Mankato doesn’t have everything. It is true
however that not far from there is where Jay Hormel redefined what it means to
be meat. The baby was born. Does wine make my teeth red? Must everything have a
romantic subplot?
The
emptiness has to go somewhere. Who decides who gets the armrest? My seatmate in
Navy plaid, that’s who. He expels air like tomato soup at a lazy boil. Through
the clouds (less a thing than a happening at that height) the cemeteries look
like circuit boards.
A
guy at the cobbler’s told a small girl he wished he was her age and had it to
do all over again. What for? I handed my shoes over. He remembered the trolley
that ran from Carroll Gardens to Park Circle and one that ran from there out to
Coney Island. His buddy walked in and demonstrated the basic steps of the
Argentine Cross which ended by the door with a little waggle of the hips. He
put his hands on my face (they felt like cold toast) and invited me to a
Knights of Columbus dance.
Eight New Ideas
Prince
Charles with that worried long red horseface has been named the world’s best
dressed man. He said that sounds like something I would do. He said run your
fingers all around me. Wouldn’t you? Is it possible that a building that big could
just come right up on me like that? Its crown (cruciform groin vault) clad in
silver Enduro KA-2 a metal developed in Germany by Krupp looks like a chestnut
blossom (ice cream cone). Be it ever so humble. Ordered dust covers. Day
wasted. Over the hours that are ours the others are like sedatives.
And
now I am tempted by a top.
Catherine
Kietzman brought in the most scrap metal and rubber during war drives. Favoring
tax reform makes you a Communist. Everyone can stand to hear the poor cry. God
didn’t do for you, Donna Paine. Catherine Kietzman did. The Post Office makes
you a Fascist. We speak different languages but there is only one line. Though
most patrons will not physically attack a cutter-in-line no words are spared. An
old lady refused to let a man “simply” slide an envelope through the window
without waiting in line. I admired her. If he tried that shit on me I’d tell
him he had to get permission from everyone else in line before I’d even think
about it. And when he slid it in anyway I kicked him in the balls.
The
shirtless homeless guy on the train who already had three seats to himself
jabbed at a woman standing near him and said you’re not moving. Apparently he
needed more leg room. He was exposing our weakness to show us some kind of
essential truth about ourselves (that we don’t always like to move) while
demonstrating a juvenile tendency to take things TOO FAR.
The
Indian tennis player (ranked 130th in the world) is moderately hot, yes? He has
no fat on his body. But can he do the Lindy Hop?
My
Great Uncle Phillip and Martin Kippenberger were fat jaundiced men with little
heads and bad livers. Phillip taught mother everything she knows about packing
and he wept uncontrollably at goodbyes. Anne’s dream in which I dissed her with
a look that said don’t bother me now I’ve got problems made me think about how
I consider myself a good listener. I get off the train and tell him I just got
off the train he says he knows it he’s at the Chinese so I turn back.
There’s
nothing wrong with Ellen her mother says she just loves too much meaning
there’s a lot wrong with Ellen. We pull out the foot bath to see what good it
might do.
The
cluster of ants was so thick it turned the corner of the towel black. As I
approached it slowly broom at the ready the economy size waterbug became bigger
still until the cat snapped it up in her jaws and ran upstairs. And when you
see Anita Bryant hand Ronald Reagan an orange you think about your childhood.
Bud sent holly from South Jersey at Christmas and Ruthellen and Larry oranges
and grapefruit from Florida. The only time you had lobster Mr. Cederstrom
brought it down from Maine. I saw my first crocuses in Park Slope and smelled
the hyancinths. I get excited just thinking about magnolias. Out of nowhere I
smelled ashtrays and was reminded of home. Like bundt cake. The correct term is
bald-faced and refers to a face without whiskers. Beards were commonly worn by
businessmen as a way to mask facial expressions when making deals.
Nutty
I’d
gone into the kitchen to see how the sweet potatoes were doing and was thinking
about what Anne said to Tom: “I know I love you.” In the end (which end?) we’re
all human (really?) no matter how famous we (who?) are. A mourning dove was watching me from the window ledge. Much
curiosity. Jason joined us. He suggested we give it some bread. I said no,
there wouldn’t be enough for our dinner. He said I was being selfish.
More
interesting to me than the general fact of homosexual activity amongst bonobos
is that the low-ranking female bonobos “advertise” the sex act more loudly when
invited to have sex with high-ranking bonobos. Other than other reasons for
having sex (reduce stress and competition, develop affiliations, express and
test social relationships, reconciling conflicts and consoling victims in
distress) their impulse is to fuck up the social order. And if you really let
yourself get inside that thought, coupled with how little we know of what they
know, it changes everything.
The
minister who was leading Jason’s sister Sharon’s retreat invited us to write
encouraging words to her. Jason wrote about a time when he was nine and Sharon
was 16 and she had just gotten her license and drove him to South Street in
Philadelphia. He saw a homeless guy who said, “Hey, what are you doin’?” They
went into a hippie shop run by a guy in tights so tight you could see his
balls. Pink Floyd was playing. Jason said it was the first time he’d realized
there were new experiences. The main thing (at least in our
minds) was to say nothing about God, or his “son.”
Did
you like the sausages? He always asks about them when my thoughts have moved on
to something else.
We
rifled through a big box of family photos. Jason said of my
father’s mother she’s got your chin. He’s right. She does. Here’s one of
the block parties: men with ’70s sideburns and striped pants playing
volleyball in the street. And here’s a gray-haired man in leisure pants and a
blue short-sleeved sweater-top with white piping jumping up to spike the ball.
It’s my father, fully airborne. A
woman no one knows could only be the girl he was dating before he joined the
Navy. We let it pass. Then Pop and his navy buddies sunning themselves in their
underwear on the deck of a destroyer. It’s the gayest he gets.
There’s a picture of me jumping up in a spread eagle (both feet off the
ground). I am my father’s daughter.
In
the winter you can hear the wind whipping across the lake from way off. There’s
a cat walking across the snow like Jesus, probably looking for the limburger we
threw out yesterday. Also a nuthatch, three deer and a woodpecker. We’re all
hungry. Here, try some of this pound cake.
I
put the bower birds here so I’ll always remember them. I don’t want the feeling
to go away. But when someone says they couldn’t live without you, they could.
Who can you trust? Only my cobbler can tell me “good zipper” and have me
believe him. He said “nice boots,” and his toothless assistant came running.
At
the laundromat a very small boy literally saunters past a small girl. They eye each other animalistically. So
much for childhood. They were the same height but she had a bigger head.
If
you’re ever looking for Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews in Borough Park, don’t
bother. Stores are out of them. Nutty Chews are not the same. I say I need
Goldenberg’s, but he doesn’t sell them. The Chinese don’t carry them either.
Neither does Boris. Neither do the three Arabs. They all had Nutty Chews.
Forget Duane Reade, they never have anything. There’s a store on 46th St. and
11th Ave. that never looks open but always is. It’s run by a funny British
Hasidic woman. She says she used to have a big Goldenberg’s display until “the
Jewish inspector” told her to take it down and only carry Nutty Chews. “You
won’t find Goldenberg’s in any of the Jewish stores in the neighborhood.” So
Goldenberg’s is treyf?
Purple
martins are expected here around April 15th.
Stiff Breeze
Is
it true that if it can’t be grown it’s got to be mined? In looking for an
answer, I thought vaguely (the best I could do) about the origins of things. I
decided it was true and sad. True things are sad because they’re finite, like
plates under desserts. Somewhere off to the right, a man sang that the spot
where he stood was empty. Ruth Gruber, who in 1932 was the youngest person (age
8) ever to earn a doctorate, said Alaska taught her to live inside time and
that it was pointless to be restless.
I
like a man in a suit. I let the image move around me. I admire him standing
there—too hot in a suit to sit. He dabs at his sweat without expression. I
don’t even mind a little double chin on a man in a suit. Then he walks away.
As
if it’s not bad enough to be overslaughed (passed over for a promotion), which
is from the Dutch overslaan, slaan meaning to strike, it has to sound like
what’s done to cabbage to make it edible. Heavy linen and heavy metal are not
the same things. As a means of differentiating, that adjective is useless.
The Dharma Bums
Heading
west I peeked into an orange restaurant with curved white walls and saw a child
on a grownup lap stabbing a drink with a straw. I was running the marathon in
five mile chunks. Somewhat into the first chunk I got a second wind and ran as
if running was what I do. Jason called to tell me he bought sweat suits at
Kmart on his break. The idea was that wearing these would make us feel like we
lived in a heated apartment.
Mom’s
house is messier than ever. Sleeping arrangements are on a first come basis. You
can’t get to any of the bedrooms. Mary Jo and Paul took the pull-out couch in
grandmother’s old room, Katya the double blow-up bed in the living room and I,
the last to commit, the twin blow-up in the dining room wedged between a drop
leaf table and some cane chairs.
When
I hear from Jason he’s scrubbing and re-curing the cast iron cookware. If only
we’d win the lottery but what about looking for better jobs? Forget about
velvet bed pillows. One day I hadn’t heard from him in a while which made me
wonder in the middle of a dysfunctional family drama if he hadn’t called in
sick and question why he wanted me to get the refill on painkillers. Before the
movie ended I got a text: I bought pants, three pair at $20 each. What a relief!
The pants were thick and had even thicker pocket linings. Later he said that
Matt’s assessment of his movie treatments was correct, that what he’d written
did resemble stuff two guys would shout out at a bar, that he needed to make
you “care” about them.
This
is what this hat does. I’m not wearing it wrong. It doesn’t go down any
further. I’m tired of updates from friends though I’m sure they’ve written
perfectly good books.
